By very early yesterday morning, Jarid Maldonado had already spent 16 hours in a frantic search for his missing mother who worked in one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center destroyed in an attack on Tuesday morning.
The 23-year-old's nightmare began around 9am on Tuesday. He was driving downtown on New York's West Side Highway and witnessed the first of two explosions from planes crashing into the landmark buildings where he knew his mother Myrna Agosto worked on the 71st floor office of the city's Port Authority.
"I saw the explosion and panicked. The only thing in my mind was to rescue her. I wasn't thinking straight. ," he said. "I'm just praying she doesn't go. All I know at this stage is it's been so many hours since this happened and she would have called. Right now, I don't know what to think. I don't know what to do."
Maldonado recounted his story while he waited to be interviewed by detectives outside a makeshift center where police were gathering information from relatives about the missing.
The center was across the street from Bellevue Hospital on Manhattan's east side where some of the victims were being taken. Volunteers outside the hospital had lists of names of more than 400 people who had already been admitted to three city hospitals. They would not give out any information on their conditions or any death tolls.
By the time Maldonado reached the center, frustrated and agonizing over his mother's fate, he and his family had already called some 70 area hospitals. He had also called her cellular phone, watched hours of news coverage and walked many miles in a fruitless search for clues.
"I came here because I'm sick of waiting in the house," he said.
"Everyone's talking about who did it. But how about how are we going to get information to the loved ones? I really don't care about Osama bin Laden. Let's deal with that later," Maldonado said.
After he saw the explosions, Maldonado rushed to the scene.
"I just couldn't help standing there for 30 seconds. It defied the borders of realism," he said.
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